Living, Food and Diving:
This is our third trip to the Phuket area, this time I was there for a conference. Kitty tagged along and we managed three days of diving (3 days, 9 dives). We stayed at the Hilton resort on Karon beach. The hotel is pretty comfortable (swimming pools, tennis courts, and 1 min to the beach). The food: we went twice to Baan Rim Pa -- good but expensive, and walked down to Kata area a couple of times, eating at the nice Euro cafe.

Diving was as typical for Phuket, with the added inconveniences of rainy season; the visibility ranged between 10m-15m, water was warm enough for 3mm full or short suits. We did (Racha Yai, Racha Nai, Koh Doc Mai), Phi Phi (Bida Nok, Bida Nai), and (King Cruiser, Shark Point, Koh Doc Mai). The usual marine life for tropics; saw leopard sharks twice, and the divemaster (New) of Dive Asia remarkably found a few bamboo sharks hiding under a tiny shelf at Koh Doc Mai.

The photos below are mostly from my Oly C5050 camera operated with an Inon Z220s strobe. Kitty used her Canon S80 (thumbnail names are in red), which somehow has trouble getting sharp focus on several shots. Below are selected, processed (Photoshop Elements) images from the trip.

banded-boxer-shrimp_P1010487.jpg 175.98 KB	boxfish_P1010482.jpg 157.16 KB	butterfly_IMG_0591.jpg 132.88 KB	butterfly_P1010341.jpg 202.48 KB
clown_IMG_0633.jpg 131.68 KB	clownfish_P1010394.jpg 169.50 KB	comet_IMG_0573.jpg 205.48 KB	devil-scorpionfish_P1010388.jpg 206.22 KB
flounder_P1010373.jpg 206.98 KB	goby_P1010365.jpg 132.23 KB	lionfish_P1010302.jpg 127.87 KB	moray_IMG_0587.jpg 164.92 KB
moray_P1010315.jpg 160.83 KB	nudibranch_P1010384.jpg 213.01 KB	nudibranch_P1010417.jpg 157.20 KB	porcelain-crab_P1010326.jpg 262.72 KB
ring_IMG_0646.jpg 90.39 KB	scorpion_IMG_0682.jpg 210.28 KB	scorpion_P1010347.jpg 267.93 KB	sea-cucumber_P1010376.jpg 159.60 KB
sea-cucumber_P1010377.jpg 222.72 KB	shark_P1010402.jpg 161.36 KB	shark_P1010434.jpg 200.27 KB	shark_P1010437.jpg 176.46 KB
shark_P1010479.jpg 166.54 KB	shark_P1010480.jpg 143.53 KB	short-hand-commensal--shrimp_P1010327.jpg 280.28 KB	squirrel_P1010456.jpg 208.30 KB
	stonefish_P1010357.jpg 207.12 KB	yellowtail-spinecheek_P1010311.jpg 157.61 KB